Forming a new healthy habit is one of

the best ways to improve your life. But

what actually works? What can help you

create a new habit that sticks? In order

to find out, we ran two large studies

and tested 22 different habit formation

techniques. So, how did our first study

work? Well, unfortunately, we know that

many behavior change techniques are

simply not effective when they're tested

rigorously. Because of that, we wanted

to cast a very wide net to find

potentially promising techniques. That's

the reason we implemented 22 habit

formation techniques including the

following. One, solemn promise. Writing

a promise that you'll practice your

habit every day. Two, home reminders.

Writing a note to yourself and placing

it somewhere where you'll see it. Three,

reward. Coming up with a reward you can

give yourself every time you start

performing your habit. Four, mantra.

Saying, "I cannot fail." And repeating

it to yourself 10 times. And finally,

five, mini habit. Coming up with a tiny

version of your habit you can do on days

when you can't do the full thing. Take a

few moments now to consider which of

these techniques do you think worked in

our study and which do you think were

duds? I'll give you a hint. Only two out

of these five methods turned out to be

promising. All right, now let's get back

to the study design. We recruited 477

participants who were all asked to pick

a goal for a new habit they wanted to

form and to report on their progress

every week for four weeks. That way, we

could track how many times they did

their habit each week and to what extent

they felt their habit goal was met. To

help us answer questions about what

really works, the participants were

randomized into different groups. Some

participants were in the pure control

group. They did nothing other than

report back on their progress. Others

were in a reminders only control group.

They were just like the pure control

group, but they also got daily email

reminders about their habit. These two

control groups helped us see if the

habit formation techniques were doing

better than nothing at all. And they

helped us check if daily email reminders

were actually helpful. Yet another group

got a behavior change method that has

been previously studied in the

psychology literature, sometimes known

as Whoop, which stands for wish outcome

obstacle plan. Simplifying a little, to

do the Whoop technique, you first think

of a goal that you wish to achieve, such

as eating more healthy vegetables every

week. Then you visualize getting the

outcome from it that you want most, such

as better health. After that, you take

some time to describe an obstacle that

could get in the way of the plan, such

as running out of vegetables to cook and

eating something unhealthy instead.

Finally, you come up with an if then

plan to overcome the obstacle. For

example, if you run out of veggies, then

you'll immediately buy more at the

store. This Whoop method is also

sometimes known by the less sexy name,

mental contrasting with implementation

intentions. Including this Whoop group

helped to see if this commonly used

wellstudy technique was better than the

other techniques we were testing. The

next group of participants was the

biggest one. Each participant in this

group was randomized to try five out of

the 22 possible habit techniques. This

group was also the most important group

because it allowed us to look at whether

people stuck to their habit more when

one of these habit techniques was

randomly assigned to them compared to

when it wasn't. The final group of

participants also got five out of 22

habit techniques to try. But unlike the

prior group, they got to pick which

techniques to try rather than having

them assigned at random. This allowed us

to investigate whether people are more

successful if they choose which

techniques to do rather than having

those techniques assigned to them. Okay,

so what did we actually find in our

study? The first result, which surprised

us a lot, was that the control group

that got daily email reminders did not

succeed at their habit any better than

the control group that didn't. They

practice their habits 3.3 days per week

and 3.2 days per week, respectively,

which is not a statistically significant

difference. Is this because reminders

aren't important? No. As we'll soon see,

reminders actually seem to matter. But

email reminders in particular didn't

work. Perhaps people simply start

ignoring them when they come every day,

or people don't check their email

reliably. Or maybe a positive effect of

email reminders on habits is just too

small for a study to have reliably

detected it. The second result, which

also surprised us, is that the

muchstudied Whoop technique didn't seem

to work in this context. The group

assigned to do the Whoop technique maybe

had a slight boost in their habit over

the first week, but by the end of four

weeks, we were seeing no difference

between those doing Whoop and those in

the control group. Does that mean that

Whoop is useless? Not necessarily. Other

studies have found it effective for some

types of behavior change. So perhaps

it's just less effective for forming new

daily habits than for other things. Or

perhaps our study was just an unlucky

fluke. But our study does provide some

evidence against Whoop as a highly

effective generalpurpose behavior change

strategy. Now here's another chance for

you to make a guess. Did choosing which

of the five out of 22 habit techniques

people get to perform beat having those

techniques assigned to them at random?

Nope. We detected no difference between

choosing the habit information

techniques yourself and having them

randomly assigned to you. At this point,

you may wonder, was our entire study

just no effects? Well, thankfully, we

actually did find some interesting

positive effects. The first positive

finding is that motivation was a

meaningful predictor of the extent to

which participants succeeded at forming

their habit. This makes sense

intuitively, but often what makes sense

intuitively fails to work in rigorous

studies. It's good to see that we were

able to verify it. to suggest that if

you're trying to decide between two

different healthy habits to form, it may

be wise to choose whichever of the two

you feel more motivated to go after.

Now, we get to the most interesting

findings from the study. Of the 22 habit

formation techniques that we randomized

participants to try, a whopping 17

appear to be totally useless. Just two

were slightly promising and just three

were promising. The first slightly

promising technique is what we called

listing habit benefits. It involves

making a list of the benefits the chosen

habit could provide and pondering which

benefit among those is most important to

you. This technique is designed to

increase your motivation for whatever

habit you've chosen. While on its own,

its results were not very convincing, it

was more effective for participants with

lower motivation, which makes sense

because that is the issue it's aiming to

address. The second slightly promising

technique we called support of a friend.

It simply involves asking a friend or

family member to support you in your

habit change efforts. Even though we're

classifying it as slightly promising,

the effects of this technique were weak

and might actually have been the result

of chance. Now, let's get into the more

promising techniques. Remember earlier

when we had you guess which habit

techniques worked? Well, two of the ones

we showed you then seem to help with

habit success. So, here are those five

techniques again. Can you remember which

you guessed worked? Making a solemn

promise to do the habit every day was

totally useless. Choosing a reward for

doing your habit, that didn't work

either. Repeating the mantra, I cannot

fail, ironically, totally failed. Home

reminders, which involved writing a

physical reminder note to yourself and

placing it where you'll see it, actually

did seem to help. It's especially

interesting that this was helpful

considering the daily email reminders,

did not seem to help. Perhaps it's

because a physical reminder in your home

is more salient than a daily email.

Additionally, the mini habit technique,

also sometimes called tiny habits, which

involves coming up with a small version

of your habit that you can do on days

when you don't have time to do the full

thing, also appear to be helpful.

Participants who did this mini habit

technique ended up meeting their habit

goals at a higher rate. Finally, the

single most promising technique from our

study is one that we call habit

reflection. It involves three steps.

First, you think back to a previous

successful habit that you formed.

Second, you identify what factors and

techniques you think led to your success

with that past habit. Third, you write

down a plan for how you can apply what

you learned from that past success to

this new habit that you're hoping to

perform. The impressive effectiveness of

this habit reflection technique was

perhaps the most interesting and

surprising finding of the whole study.

Since our study tested so many different

techniques, you might wonder, could even

the most positive seeming findings from

the study just be a fluke due to random

chance? That's an important question. To

help make sure that wasn't the case, we

ran an entire second study. In the

second study, we bundled together the

five most promising techniques from the

first study into a habit formation tool

that we call daily ritual. Daily ritual

includes all five of these methods:

habit reflection, mini habits, home

reminders, support of a friend, and

listing habit benefits. Participants

were asked to pick a habit they wanted

to form, and then they were either

randomly assigned to use the daily

ritual tool or to the control group. We

then tracked how many days they did

their habit over the next six weeks.

While the differences were not massive,

the participants who used daily ritual

stuck to their habits more effectively

than those in the control group. Those

using daily ritual also reported a

higher degree of success at

accomplishing their habit formation

goals overall. The coolest part though

is that we made the tool from our study

called Daily Ritual available for you to

use entirely for free. Find the link in

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